Leave the leaves? It’s a West Coast thing, so the Midwesterner in her is raking

Fall is my favorite season. Granted, this fall has been weird. It’s the middle of November and my begonias and impatiens are still vigorously blooming.

Apparently, something called the Chinook winds combined with atmospheric pressure is driving warm air into the Midwest, or at least that’s how it was explained to me by ChatGPT.

All of this means I’ve been cheated from enjoying a bevy of crisp autumn days and I’ve got some pent-up anger at “down-sloping winds” messing with that mojo.

Some days I’m still wearing short sleeves. People, it’s November. My arms should have been covered up by mid-October at the latest. I can’t be the only person who enjoys a respite from looking at her arms.

But I realize that this less-than-chilly autumn is hopefully just an anomaly. The one thing, of course, that never changes about the season is the freaking leaves.

Specifically, leaves that have swooned and departed from all the assorted oak and maple trees and are now creating a foliage carpet in everyone’s yard. A carpet that many people are hell bent on expunging.

Now before anyone shouts, “No, not your leaf rant again,” let me state for the record that I haven’t complained about the “suburban leaf eradication compulsion” in years.

OK, maybe “years” is a bit exaggerated, but I’m almost certain it’s been more than one, so years is grammatically correct.

Also, it’s not my fault that I’m once again in my leaf rant era. None other than the November issue of “Better Homes and Gardens” magazine has whipped my emotions into a frenzy. An article entitled “Leave Your Leaves” ignited a cornucopia of feelings that I had been tamping down.

These feelings are predicated on the fact that I moved here from the West Coast where leaf raking is a big no-no. To clear your yard of leaves is seen as harming the environment.

We were taught that fall leaves are our friends that decompose and benefit the soil and provide winter housing for small critters.

If you rake your yard you might as well hang a banner in your yard that says, “I hate nature and I’m inside my house right now using non-recyclable disposable plastic products.”

So, when I moved here I wasn’t motivated to rake my yard. This lack of motivation was short lived.

I’d like to think of myself as a person who’s not susceptible to peer pressure. Well, I caved into raking faster than a maple tree sheds its leaves in a F4 tornado.

First, there are just way too many leaves to leave in your yard. Your grass would be suffocated. It would be death by foliage.

Secondly, I like my neighbors and I would feel guilty that my leaves were migrating into their pristine, leaf free yards. Yards where they had spent hours mowing, then mulching and finally bagging all of their leaves.

All of this means every autumn while I admire the bounty of fall I also moan about having to harvest all that bounty into leaf bags. A part of me, let’s call it West Coast Sherry, wants to shout from the cul-de-sac, a battle cry, if you will, that we all need to “Let’s those leaves linger.”

But I’ve already been raking, because now that I’m a Midwesterner I know that my “let your leaves linger” movement is flawed. To not bag your leaves seems hostile to your precious grass and also your neighbors. As in could a linger lead to a finger? I’m not saying that’s ever happened but I sure don’t want to find out.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs @snarkynsuburbs, on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and on TikTok @snarkyinthesuburbs and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.